I cleaned and re-organized the kitchen! I still need to pull out the fridge and paint behind it, but I haven’t decided if I want that area to be the same as the backsplash or the rest of the living area…ideas?

Poor baby Dylan had a hell of a day today. He got three (3!!) car rides and got to play with my parents dogs, Sassy and Butch with only one minor incident involving Butch’s head inside Dylan’s mouth…but Butch totally started it. Anyway, after all his gallivanting around town, we got home and went to play in the backyard where Dylan promptly stepped on a roofing nail. That’s right, a roofing nail. In my backyard. We haven’t done any roofing in the entire year we’ve lived here…but our neighbors have. It seems a rogue roofing nail found its way all the way over into our fenced-in yard. This isn’t the type of incident you really look out for on your own property until it’s too late.

So if your neighbors have had ANY work done on their homes, do yourself {and your fur-babies!} a favor and check behind them, even if it seems unlikely or even impossible.

And Dylan? He’s quite alright. James removed the nail, we peroxided it up, bandaged his foot {yay EMT boyfriend!} and whisked him off to the vet. The doc said there was nothing to worry about, like Tetanus or infection, since we cleaned it right away. Dylan was just excited to get another ride : ) I’ll post a photo of his cute little huge bandaged foot ASAP, but he’s pretty zonked out now…and drooling. In the meantime here’s a photo of Dylan and me on the bed…his favorite place to be! *I cannot even edit out his crazy eyes, they’re THAT intense!*

I know it’s been a bajillion years since I posted about my bathroom reno….and it’s been done for half a bajillion years….AND I realized that I hadn’t posted pictures of the finished product! Er, 98% finished product. Anyway, when we left off I had laid the new flooring. Since then I’ve:

1. Painted the walls!

2. Installed a gorgeous new glass top vanity!

3. Boyfriend hung up a bunch of shelves for me. Thanks sweetie-pie!

4. Got a cool new shower caddy.

5. Cool new shower caddy didn’t fit my giant shampoo bottle.

6. Got an even cooler and even newer shower caddy and gave other cool less-new shower caddy to boyfriend.

7. Ordered a sweet chandy for 75% off on http://www.homedepot.com to add some mood lighting – with a low watt bulb to boot so my eyes don’t melt every morning.

Yeah, yeah, the mirror is still brown. You noticed. It’ll soon be big and beautiful and I’ll be forced to put in a brighter bulb so I can admire myself in it better.

Just to remind you, this is what it looked like way back when:

We’ve come a long way, baby!!

What’s still on the list besides a new mirror? So glad you asked!

1. I want some either faux or fo-real crown molding around the room – but to do that we need to finish painting the rest of the master bedroom, since it opens into the vanity area of the bathroom, so that’s at the bottom of the list for now. {Just in case you were wondering why I hadn’t been more careful about cutting in around the ceiling.}

2. As long as we’re ragging on me painting the ceiling, it’s totally ok because there was a minor SNAFU in the drywalling front where we had to cut out and re-texure the ceiling, and there is NO MATCHING that 1984 original white up there! Why is that good? Because, it gives me a reason to hire our painters from work {discount!} to come paint my ceilings a pretty, airy, lighter shade of the bedroom wall color to cover up that small oops moment.

3. Since I raised the shower curtain rod to super-heights, I actually have to make a shower curtain. Let me rephrase, my mom is making us a shower curtain. In fact, nearly 100% of the work thus far in this bathroom {and everywhere else in my house} was done with her own two hands. That woman could build an ark with a spoon and a two by four. Thanks mom!!!

Anybody know where to find a sweet mirror? I do. Everyfreakingwhere. I CANNOT DECIDE!!!!!

James and I didn’t have anything to do last night so we spent 4 hours cleaning the garage and re-arranging the attic in a Doritos Taco fueled frenzy. Fu-un! This was hands down the easiest little project that’s already made the biggest difference in the world. What did we do? Well:

1. That wall where the bikes are now perfectly perched was previously overtaken by a queen size box spring, a dismantled roll-top desk, tons of leftover drywall, random wood and the door I took off the master bedroom linen closet. We trashed the box spring, loaded all the desk pieces into the attic and voila, instant usable floorspace. So incredibly simple and ridiculous that it took us nearly a whole year to do…

2. James got these sweet bike hangers form Lowe’s (employee discount, score!) and hung our bikes and Malibu’s carrier out of the way so now we can walk all the way around his car, there’s no fear of accidentally hitting the motorcycle, and it’s not such a trial for him to pull into the garage. Additional bonuses: I can get in the passenger side of the Subaru without him having to back completely out the garage, and now that he can GET to the drum-set maybe he’ll play more!

3. Finally threw away alllllllll the paint that the previous owners kindly left for us in the garage. Since we’ve repainted every room, there was no need to hoard touch up paint anymore. That freed up three whole shelves where we organized all the outdoor accoutrements: bug/fire ant powder/bee killer shelf, lawn care item shelf, car care item shelf, etc.

4. With the space saving re-do, we had to change up the art as well. I know, who has art in their garage? Face it…I’m weird. Anyway, we re-hung the canvases I painted for James last year behind his drum-set and plugged in the palm tree from my old apartment patio :). The plan is to get a bunch of old vinyls and hang them behind the drums floor to ceiling, with the canvases in the midst of the vinyl-wall-paper. Also, that giant flamingo isn’t going anywhere, it’s plywood and SUPER awkward to move around. Right now he’s perfectly content to stare down the driveway at the neighbors from right where he is.

5. Organized all the remaining house paint that I’ve purchased in the leftover vanity we took out of the master bathroom when we remodeled it – this is now the paint cabinet. It’s good because it keeps it out of sight, and keeps it all in one place for easy access. Plus all the rollers, trays and brushes fit there as well. Yay for recycling!

With all the extra floorspace we have from hanging the bikes and cat carrier, loading all the wood and parts into the attic and re-working the footprint of the larger items in the garage, we’ve got so much room in our garage now! Next we’ll be adding another wall rack to hang the brooms and shovels on the back porch, hopefully hidden behind a screen or something that we’ll build. Any ideas?